In a wide variety of technical contexts of use, electrical lines often have to be connected to one another. For example, in automotive engineering electrical lines coming from vehicle components have to be connected to electrical lines of other vehicle components or of, for example, a control device. A plurality of electrical lines are often combined to form a cable harness.
In order to enable the connection of as many electrical lines as possible to a plurality of other electrical lines in a simple manner, multiple-contact plugs are often provided, which can be plugged to one or more mating plugs. Such multiple-contact plugs are sometimes also referred to as cable harness plugs. In such a multiple-contact plug, a plurality of contacts are provided, each of the contacts being connected as a rule to an electrical line. The contacts are housed in a plug housing. Here the contacts are configured in such a way that when the plug housing is plugged together with a housing of the mating plug, or housings of the mating plugs, the contacts are brought into electrical contact with mating contacts situated there. By producing a plug connection between the multiple-contact plug and one or more mating plugs, in this way the electrical lines attached to their contacts or mating contacts can be electrically connected to one another.
In plug connector systems that are to be used for particular, often safety-relevant, purposes, so-called short-circuit jumpers are sometimes provided. A short-circuit jumper works in such a way that when the plug connection is detached, i.e. the mating plug is pulled apart from the multiple-contact plug, two of the contacts provided in the multiple-contact plug are deliberately short-circuited. A resulting short-circuit can be recognized for example by a control unit that monitors one of the respective lines.
Such a functionality can be required for example for plug connections by which an airbag is to be connected electrically to other components, for example to a control device in a vehicle. Via the contacts deliberately short-circuited when the plug connection is detached, in this case a circuit for the triggering of an airbag detonator capsule is closed, thus preventing accidental triggering of the airbag.
An example of a plug having a short-circuit jumper is described in German Utility Model No. 91 12 178 U1.